Friday, June 12, 2009

Yesterday, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a joint press release announcing the Bay Area region's preference for stimulus and other HSR spending the Bay Area to be directed towards upgrades to the Caltrain corridor, the expansion of SJ Diridon Station, and the establishment of the new SF Transbay Terminal as the SF terminus.

Newsom had already come out in support of Transbay. Enhancing Diridon was a foregone conclusion. But the announcement apparently portends a broader regional agreement.

We should learn more about this announcement of regional aspirations at this morning's meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is brokering the agreement. More details from the Chronicle:

The proposal would turn the Diridon Station in downtown San Jose and the planned new Transbay Terminal in downtown San Francisco into major regional transit hubs.

In addition, the Caltrain Station at Fourth and King streets in San Francisco's South of Market would be expanded to accommodate high-speed rail.

The proposed package also seeks funding to electrify Caltrain and to equip its rail cars with automated train-control equipment that senses impending danger on the tracks. The train tracks in San Bruno would be separated from truck and auto traffic.

Together the projects would cost $3.4 billion, said Randy Rentschler, government affairs manager for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The region will ask for $1.6 billion in new federal stimulus money to help pay for the improvements. Additional funds would come from the nearly $10 billion funding pot backed by California voters for high-speed rail.

The Bay Area will seek additional funding later to pay for other projects.

One could argue that the explicit advocacy of Caltrain upgrades is a rebuke to NIMBY calls for taking HSR off the Caltrain corridor altogether, but I'm not sure the powers that be would bother to dignify such fringe proposals. This could turn out to merely be formalizing exactly which upgrade projects should come first. (Incidentally, Caltrain was awarded $9 million in stimulus funding for unrelated projects this week.)

It's encouraging to see a regional consensus emerging around Transbay, which should hopefully end the public political squabbles. What do you think? Will this announcement put an end to the issue, or merely galvanize opposing forces and bring the funding and technical challenges of Transbay further into the fore?

39 comments:

I think the best thing that can happen for the transbay is for it to get higher attention today, and have the trainbox be part of the initial construction. If the trainbox is left for phase 2 it will be much more likely that the stations engineering does not properly take account of the needs of the trainbox.

I hope this will lead to a better design that properly takes the actual train portion of the station into account, because right now the proposed solution is severely lacking.

The $3.4B number does not sound right to me. Is this really the expected cost of the the Diridon Station, the HSR portions of the Transbay Terminal, the upgrade of the 4th & King station, AND all the trackwork required from the SJ to SF corridor (not to mention stations bw SJ and SF)?

Something doesn't add up here.

Also, are they requesting that this money come from the $8B HSR money or from some other federal stimulus source? I assume they are talking about the $8B...

I hope all of the proposed work is fully coordinated with the HSR plans. But how can it be if the HSR plans are still early in the process? Why pay so much money to do work now when some of it will have to be changed again later when grades are separated and four tracks are installed? Will this be a waste of money?

I actually thin the people in charge of building all of this know what they are doing. They aren't stupid people. When its all said and done. The result will be the system you see in the videos. just watch. Of course there has to be lots of bakc and forth and input and blah blah blah but the people who are actually going to build the thing, the politicians, the engineers, the contractors, and everyone else involved, already, whether or not the details have been made public - all already know what is going to happen. Everything else is just formalities.

Serious transportation people say that HSR should leave Caltrain ROW at Redwood City and cross over to connect to the East Bay. Which would eliminate the need to quadruple track Caltrain, freeing up money for oh ... connecting more cities with the system.

TRAC are no "serious transportation people" they're just a bunch of foamer wannabes. While their efforts to support rail in california are appreciated to some extent, they have a particular agenda that tends to based on emotion.

Jim, I hope you're right, but there were plenty of people who said the same thing (Just wait and see how awesome it is!) about BART to Millbrae and SFO, which is an utter disaster. And do we even need to talk about the T in SF (slower and lower ridership than the bus)? Local transit officials lost most of my confidence to "just let them figure it out" many years ago.

As of last November the whole segment was supposed to cost $4.2. Now we have a number of $3.4 billion for a few projects.

Still to be paid for:

Tunneling to transbay50 miles of quadtracking46 grade crossingsIntermediate stationsRebuilding all caltrain stationsElevated structures, berms, what have youTemporary row during constructiondowntown San Mateodowntown Mtn Viewetcetc

anon- I use bart to sfo and find it to be very convenient. I also use muni everyday and find it to be convenient. I think that while initial predictions are often not met, eventually the numbers do appear. it took bart decades to reach its potential. and hsr not have 50 million riders in the first few years either. It takes a while to build ridership. And no matter what you build, someone is going to be unhappy.

Even assuming that number of $4.2 billion for the whole segment is true (you didn't provide anything to support that by the way), that number never included any tunneling to the transbay or any portion of transbay terminal construction. I also believe it didn't include anything for Diridon improvements beyond whatever the minimum to support HSR would be, I believe station improvements are part of the cities responsibility). So take off $0.9 billion and you have $2.5 billion being spent so far, leaving $1.7 billion for further improvements to the corridor. Doesn't seem particularly fishy to me.

Serious transportation people say that HSR should leave Caltrain ROW at Redwood City and cross over to connect to the East Bay.

Serious transportation people who are overlooking the fact that California needs Congress to grow the pie for High Speed Rail. The Obama Administration has allocated $8bn as we all know, but more is needed, and California needs that pie to get a lot bigger. People need to be really clear about the fact that the Speaker of the House of Representatives has the Transbay Terminal in her district, and any notions of not serving San Francisco are dead in the water. That is the political reality, and "serious transportation people" will recognize that.

This isn't to slam the East Bay, which is clearly poorly served in the current alignment. If I had a spare $20 billion or so in my pocket I'd wave my magic wand and fix it.

Having Pelosi in such a powerful position is a huge ace up San Francisco's sleeve, and will probably be a good thing for HSR in California over the long term, but we need to be clear-eyed about political realities.

Definitely much, much better than that silly idea of a single unified transfer point that the "foamers" were promoting! Thankfully, the people who rarely ride the train made the decisions for us.

@Bianca --

Agree completely that any attempt to not serve SF would be silly and not successful.

No serious transportation advocate would suggest excluding either San Jose or San Frnacisco from being a destination directly served by HSR. I hope that clarifies things.

I think there was a miscommunication. Altamont (East Bay) means San Francisco gets directly connected to Sacramento and LA. Altamont means that San Jose gets directly connected to Sacramento and Los Angeles.

And the connection times for all city-pairs are better or comparable.

Additionally, this will leave money available for connection to Reno, Redding or Las Vegas. Growing the pie wouldn't you say?

Whatever: Reno will never happen, unless an earthquake leaves a big hole in the Sierras. Redding might happen, but it's marginal.

Ultimately, the best connectivity comes from LA-SJ-SF via Pacheco, and in the future LA-Oakland-SF via Altamont and a new Transbay Tube. Altamont-through-Dumbarton inconveniently misses every major destination in the Bay Area except SF itself.

I don't think there are many readers of this blog who thing the BART extension to SFO was a well engineered project, I think most of us would agree much of it was political.

But there is really no rational reason that HSR would cross the dumbarton from the peninsula to then go up the East Bay and end there. San Francisco is an extremely important destination for HSR and in all likelihood will be by far the most used single stop on the line. I would love for there to be more service to the East Bay, but the only way that would happen is if the Altamont alignment were chosen, or at some later date (Phase III/IV) where a spur came down from Sac, passed through the altomont and then crossed the bay via a new Transbay tunnel, crossed at Dumbarton, or went into SJ. The only people who believe HSR should not end in SF are residents of the peninsula who don't want it going through the existing Caltrain ROW; aka NIMBYs.

Almost all of you are just a bunch of illogical train lovers who act like kids. This project will never be built. Too expensive, too useless! We just need more and wider freeways and fuel efficient cars. Cars and the freedom they give us is what people want, not your damn chu chu train. If I'm in a hurry to go between LA and SF/SJ I just take a plane. If those hicks in the central valley need to go anyplace and they have no flight choices, too bad. They can drive a couple of hours or they can move to civilized areas where flights are plenty. This is not Japan or Europe where they're all socialists and the government subsidizes everything. This is America, we like freedom, low taxes and cars! Enough of you guys! Go buy a LEGO train and get it over your system!

There is plenty of room for more freeways. Just reconvert big bouleverds in the LA areas into freeways. Just buy a few houses along it if you need. Up in the Bay Area you can build plenty of them in the marshes along the bay. As a matter of fact you can circle the bay with a freeway along the water. We don't need no f.ing wetlands. Those damn birds can go to the Ocean and they can find all the wet areas they need. And you can build plenty of lanes in the I-5 in the central valley. If metro areas are congested then ok, build more transit in the metro area. Have more buses, more metrolink trains. With the money you need for HSR you can double the Metrolink network. The same with BART up in the Bay Area. Have you ever wandered why most people drive to work even when they could take a train or bus? Because cars are faster. I can go from my garage to my destination without having to transfer through a bunch of modes of transport. I can jst sit on my ass from door to door listening to beautiful country music. And I'll also get there before you with your damn chu chu fast train. by the time you go to the station, get on the train, travel, get there, take something else from the station to your destination, I'm already there with my car. I probably have time for a drink while I wait for you.

YOUR "ideas" are insane of course...YAA all the nimbys of the world are going to just let 12 lane freeways be built next to them!look at the crap from just widening a 140 year old railroad a whopping 10 feet. listen to your beautiful county music.. on a Texas freeway..We will have HSR.

Theres was noting wrong with the black dial telephone I used to use in the 70s, but be wound up with these damn cell phones anyway. Darn newfangled progress. It's the commies I tell you. its those damn pinko commies. If it weren't for them I'd still be chopping down trees to build my log cabin and carrying my water in a bucket and taking a dump behind a tree and wiping my ass with the sears catalogue the way god intended!

Your're a bunch of socialists Obamaniacs. You want socialized medicine I bet, and socialized trains, and socialized everything. On the taxpayers' back. We don't need CHOOOO CHOOOOO trains (happy now, Jim?) to take people from Fresno to Bakersfield. Those people in the valley wouldn't use the train anyway even if they had a station in their backyard. They're more addicted to the comfort of driving than us in LA or SF. Those peoople there don't even go downtown in their own city because it's in bad neighborhoods. And you think they'd go there to catch a train? And you think they'd come to downtown LA? They all think that downtown LA people kill each other all the time. And you think somebody from Fresno will go to Union Station and wait outside for a taxi? Hell no! They'll drive from home to home of the friend or relative theyre visiting without ever getting out of the car! You should talk to those folks and see how they think like. Americans are not made for trains. Only cars and planes. Get over it! We just need to shoot those arabs more so they give us cheaper oil. And we also need to drill offshore more, so we get our own gas without listening to their nonsense.

@whatever- TRAC would be happy if we were all riding around on steam powered choo choos from the old west operated by men in striped overalls and matching caps while coal embers land on our flap jack breakfast.

Actually, no fing train, I'll be honest with you. I happen to have inside information from my socialist agenda which was faxed to me just yesterday afternoon, that the high speed train will be used to take californians to a centralized hospital in Fresno for all medical care. In addition to that, married gays will be given first class seats at a discount and all california children will be transported to a central school via high speed rail where they will be taught how to drink vodka and unionize their parents' workplaces.

All requests from stimulus funding, from all the agencies will be funneled through CalTrans --- this was agreed sometime ago in Sacramento.

The CalTrans list will be what is going to be submitted to Washington, for funding.

Thus MTC can or CalTrain or CHSRA or Diridon/San Jose can compose their own lists, but whatever is sent to Washington, will be filtered by CalTrans. That list right now is of the order of $4.3 billions.

Any decision or date of when and where the first shovel of dirt will be turned? would be nice to see it soon. I did see where they are having some deal in sacramento to invite contractors to start bidding.

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